Rockwell Relay

All this time living in Utah and I've never explored the beautiful scenes in Southern Utah.  Being a biker, you'd think I would have ventured down to Moab by now.  But no... not until this ride caught my attention.  On one of my morning workouts at the gym I saw a poster advertising the Rockwell Relay... a bike relay consisting of approximately 520 miles from Moab to St. George.  Immediately I knew I had to check this out.  It required a team of four riders.  It was short notice, so despite how badly I wanted to do this race, I knew chances were slim because finding a team of four riders to undertake this with me on short notice would be difficult.  To my surprise, my daddy-o agreed to go with me.  Then my sweethearty man also agreed to be on my team.  Finally, my dad rounded up a fourth rider by doing a little asking around at work.  So we had our team:  Ali, Spencer, Mike, and Dave.  We had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to.
The course:

The course consisted of 12 legs.  We started on Friday morning and finished Saturday evening.  Each rider completed 3 legs (ideally... Mike and I had to each sit out a leg due to almost dying reasons).
Here we are in Moab, about to start the race.  The Rockwell Relay peeps were kind enough to make us lumpy gooey pancakes for breakfast that morning.  Just the energy we needed to burn a kazillion calories on our bikes.

Our crew, ready to begin...no idea how difficult the challenge is ahead of us...

Here is a short video of our race start.
And the many many incredible pics:

Rider #1 was the amazing Spencer.  He had by far the most hill climb to conquer.  Here he rides in the hot hot sun.  The rest of the crew threw drinks and nourishment his way and cheered him on.  We also stopped and took some shots of the gorgeous scenery along the way...

After Spencer finished the first leg, Rider #2 (Ali, aka me!) takes off from the first exchange.  What a team we make!

Here I am at the start of the second leg:  Monticello to Mule Canyon...the dehydration ride of my life.

Smiling for the camera... before the dehydration sets in.

This was a cool shot of me coming around the bend to find my hydration team... THANK YOU!

I can't describe how wonderful it is to see your crew there cheering you on and offering you nourishment.

Lots more climbs than I'd anticipated.  It felt like just as I thought I'd reached the top, the end never came.

Mike rode down to come encourage me, which he probably shouldn't have.  He added another mile or so to his ride.  He had no idea how much he'd need that extra energy.  At this point my heat exhaustion hit me and I was suffering from the chills in the 100+ degree heat... but I made it!  What a great feeling.  Actually I felt sick to my stomach and incapacitated for the next several hours.

Look how cool the clouds look in the sky!!

Angela and Dave had a SWEET camera they brought along, which is why we have all these amazing shots.  There were so many gorgeous photographs.  Check out these cactus flowers we found along the way.

Leg 3 was looooong.  My man got to be the one to speed through this leg.  He is definitely a speedy rider.  He also about destroyed his body in this ride, probably from heat exhaustion as well.  But he did it!  I was so proud :)  After his leg we both got to feel sick together in the van.  Why did we sign up for this?  Oh yeah, cuz it was AWESOME!

He was so fast it was hard to even get photos of him!

Breathtaking scenery

Go, go, go babe!!!

Check out that skyline

And look at this... God sure did make us a beautiful world to live in.

The Fourth Leg of the race Dave got to ride.  I say got to, because his ride looked so much fun!  The sun had started to come down and the heat was no longer unbearable.  The scenery was just absolutely unbelievable on this leg of the relay.

WOW.  All I can say.

More wowness going on here.

Beautiful, beautiful.

This is one of my fave shots.  It looks like we're walking on Mars or something.  The lighting is fantastical.

Mamasita was a tremendous help to have helping out our team.

Our trusty bikes.

My parental figures stand in front of a monstrous red rock

Go Dave!  Here is some water for you.  Drink up!

I can't believe how red and crazy cool this rock looks!

We took a potty break here and enjoyed the view.  Daddy-o poses by a nice bridge.

Angie tries to get optimal photographs by attempting a ground level shot.  There's our little van that all of us crammed in to for the whole relay.

This picture needs to be my new screensaver on my computer.

Dave finishes this leg like a champ!

The next leg (5) my amazing dad rode completely in the dark, in the middle of the night!  This is the only picture we could capture.

Here is Dave, staring leg 8.  That's right, we skipped 6 and 7.  We were trailing behind and Mike and Ali were still recovering from the heat exhaustion.  We will conquer them next year though for sure!

Go Dave!  Lucky guy got the awesome scenery again on his ride.

Incredible scenery once again

Once again rode like a champ!

Here we start leg 9.  Spencer is ready for more and more elevation climbs.  He never stopped climbing.  This leg we got to take a break and cool off by the lake.

Go dad go!

Up and up and up!!

...and up and up and up!

He did it!!  Finished with his final leg.  Seriously amazing.

Here we are starting leg #10 and its me again, anxious to hit the road again!

Happiness is... speeding down the road on a bike!

Woo hoo!!  :)  Happy me!

The scenery changed quite a bit on this ride.  Less rocks and more trees and meadows.  Still gorgeous ride.

There's my team cheering me on!  I got to climb and climb and climb on this ride, and then accelerate on a downhill, crazy dangerous, but crazy fun ride down the hill, at lightning speed.

Leg Eleven, and its that hot guy riding again :)  Way to go, my athletically gifted man!

We joked that these bones were left behind from a Rockwell Relay rider from years before who wasn't so lucky.  He probably couldn't handle the heat...

Mike smoked it on this leg.

Finally we are on the twelfth and final leg.  Dave is ready to bring us to the finish line!

Dave had a beautiful ride and some nice downhills coming in to St. George

We did it!!!  I can't believe we actually finished this beast of a race.  I am so happy we tackled this challenge.  It was an unforgettable experience.  What an amazing team we made :)  I won't mention what place we came in...but it wasn't last ;)

Check out our sweet Rockwell Relay rings!  We are so glad to be all done and be able to say we finished.  That shower afterward sure felt amazing.

This is one of my favorite shots from the ride.  It shows off our bikes on the Odyssey van, with a gorgeous pic of that ginormous red rock in the background.  Moab to St. George on bikes... the ride of a lifetime!

Here is the link to the book I made for our team, in case you wanna check that out as well.  Until next year.... time to start training!

 Rockwell Relay Book